NFL: SUPER BOWL, THEN & NOW.

For more analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com.  .  . 

.  .  .   SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner.

NFL    ----    LOTS of cliche-phrases can get to be tiresome, to a point where you wish they’d be made to disappear along with Lance Armstrong’s medals, trophies, titles and his lies, for instance, “Everything you always wanted to know about (“_____, whatever”) and were afraid to ask.” So, this page won’t repeat it while presenting facts about (another cliché-phrase:) “the Greatest Show on Earth,” yes, ladies and gentlemen, “the amazing, the one and only, America’s great annual event, “the Super Bowl.”

Our promise is this: to keep the below to what you need to know so the person at the bar next to you can’t resist buying you your next beer, and if you’re a guy surely your spouse, or girl friend, will sigh and give up wanting to pressure you to see a chick-flick during the following weekend. If you’re a wife or girl friend, on Valentine’s Day you might receive a football jersey with the number 18 on back.

            Here’s the bare and spare intel:

            It began in 1967, the first Super Bowl winner being the Green Bay Packers, the first losing team, Kansas City. Green Bay won the following year, beating Oakland. This year will be the forty-seventh Super Bowl, thus the title, “Super Bowl XLVII,” all Super Bowls having been held at major cities across the nation. The cities that have hosted the most Super Bowl challenges are Miami, 10 times, New Orleans, also 10X, this year’s event to be the eleventh for New Orleans.

            Since 1967, of the 15 teams that have won a Super Bowl, 11 have won more than once: Green Bay, Baltimore, Dallas, Miami, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, the N.Y. Giants, Denver Broncos, the Washington Redskins, New England Patriots, and Oakland. Winning but once are Kansas City, and Indianapolis, the Chicago Bears, the St. Louis Rams.

            Eight NFL teams have won the Super Bowl two or more times in a row: Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Miami, San Francisco, Dallas, Denver and New England. Not since Super Bowl XXXIX (2005) has a team won two Super Bowls in a row.

Teams losing a Super Bowl two years in a row are the Minnesota Vikings and the Denver Broncos. The record for losing the most Super Bowls in a row belongs to Buffalo, having lost four times starting 1991. The last Super Bowl outcome that included a team that also lost the previous year occurred in 1994, Buffalo losing to Dallas, 30-13.

Since 1967, Pittsburgh has had the most Super Bowl wins: six.

The highest number of points achieved by a Super Bowl winner has been 55, accrued by San Francisco vs. Denver during Super Bowl XXIV (1972), versus Denver’s 10 points.

No Super Bowl was ever won with less than double digit points, and no losing team of those finishing with only single points has ever dumped with less than the three belonging to Miami during Super Bowl VI (1972) against the 24 gained by winning franchise, Dallas.

Of the 45 players dubbed Super Bowl MVP since 1967, 24 have been quarterbacks, six have been wide receivers, seven have been running backs, two as linebackers, two as safeties, one a defensive end, one a kick returner. Among the Super Bowl QB’s, Green Bay’s Bart Starr is the only QB to win MVP two years in a row. No other Super Bowl QB-MVP of a winning team has been the event’s MVP more than once.

Last year’s Super Bowl winning team? The New York Giants.

For comments and analysis of the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers, the two about to meet on February 3 at New Orleans for Super Bowl XLVII, see future postings, this page---sports-notebook.blogspot.com.

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